Building record BXF 051 - Kingsbury House, 29 Swan Street

Kingsbury House is listed at grade II under its former name Commerce House. It has a particularly fine and well preserved late-18th century redbrick facade, which boasts a Mock Gothic arcaded cornice, but the timber-framed interior also contains a number of impressive historic features. The right-hand half of the facade conceals a 17th century structure that appears to have formed a complete house with a parlour on the street and a hall that now forms the kitchen to the rear. The two rooms are divided by a large original chimney with a newel stair on the right, and a service bay may have been lost fromthe rear gable. The hall retains carved corbel blocks that are typical of the second quarter of the 17th century and are consistent with the wind bracing of the roof structure. Much of the timber frame is concealed by Georgian plaster but fragments of an ostensibly original marbled green wall painting are exposed in a first-floor bathroom immediately above. The brick facade was added in conjunction with a new timber-framed addition to the left of the 17th century parlour to create the building’s present proportions. An exceptional number of good Georgian features survive within, including reeded door and fire surrounds. A single storied redbrick and slate extension was added behind both no. 27 and 29 shortly before its depiction on the Ordnance Survey of 1886, and as the two properties remained in the same ownership into the 20th century they may well have been linked internally. The 1886 map also shows for the first time a two-storied detached brick and slate outbuilding in the rear garden that was described in a conveyance of 1964 as a builder’s workshop and was almost certainly designed as such. This outbuilding was much altered in the 20th century, and the main house was subjected to an extensive refurbishment in the 1980s which involved the insertion of a new corridor on the first floor which cut off the right-hand bedroom from its Georgian fireplace. The lower section of the 17th century newel stair was also removed, leaving only its post in the middle of a pantry, and a new rear entrance lobby was inserted to link the Victorian extension to the original hall (S1).